Category Archives: technology

Because they are mega-every­thing, states like China and the USA become test par­a­digms for what can go right and wrong in man­ag­ing humans. Con­sider these: 1) The US has the world’s largest and most sophis­ti­cated assem­bly of spy­ing orga­ni­za­tions. They col­lect … Con­tinue read­ing →

A few cen­turies ago Europe was dot­ted with castle fortresses, sur­rounded by sup­pos­edly impreg­nable stone walls and moats of water. Bar­ri­caded in these castles were lords and ladies, suck­ing the life out of the peas­ant farms around them, and blow­ing … Con­tinue read­ing →

Big data is an enabling tech­nol­ogy. That is, it enables both risks and rewards, accord­ing the skills and judge­ments of those who engage it (http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/business-it/how-big-data-can-result-in-bad-data-20130720-hv11k.html?rand=8744926). Human beings have never been known to turn down an enabling tech­nol­ogy, regard­less of the … Con­tinue read­ing →

An arm is not an arm until it attaches to a body and moves in cer­tain ways. It is the rela­tion­ship between the arm and the body which makes it an arm, not a cer­tain weight or shape of blood … Con­tinue read­ing →

The threat from robots is already amongst us. It is not that robots are aggres­sive. It is that human beings for the most part are over­whelm­ingly lazy. Humans will kill to claim a park­ing space instead of walk­ing a hun­dred … Con­tinue read­ing →

With the first cook­ing fire to burn down a grass hut, tech­nol­ogy exceeded the human abil­ity to man­age it. The bal­ance of tech­nol­ogy and wis­dom has been pre­car­i­ous ever since. Now tech­nol­ogy avail­able to rich states and cor­po­ra­tions so far … Con­tinue read­ing →